Jim Hague said:
Except that, in many cases, the Paizo content was as good or better than the WotC content....thus growing Paizo and not WotC. Enough so that Paizo is out on its own soon with almost no stumbling blocks, thanks to high-quality content and business sense. Thus WotC's content isn't grown or expanded, and they choose not to renew the license.[/i]
Well, no. You just don't get the point.
Dragon has been a valuable marketing tool for WotC products.
How did they hype the launch of 3e? With previews in
Dragon.
How did they hype the launch of 3.5e? With previews in
Dragon.
How did they hype the launch of Eberron? With previews in
Dragon.
There isn't a single significant D&D product WotC has put out that has not be hyped with previews, bonus material, and other promotional efforts via
Dragon and/or
Dungeon. And that's going to go away.
You could argue that they could do the same thing with their DI, but that likely will cover pretty much the same customers as their website promotions in the past have. And the population of magazine buyers is likely not the same as the population of webzine subscribers; so there is a net loss of marketing potential.
In addition, all of the "supporting products" that help people play D&D will lose a marketing avenue. WotC doesn't directly benefit from, for example, megamats and tact-tiles, but they make the games WotC publishes much easier to use. Sacrificing
Dragon means also sacrificing the main marketing avenue for companies that make products like this. And that's bad for the hobby, and because WotC is so dominant in the hobby, that's also bad for them.
Sure, and that's some interesting anecdotal evidence...but it holds no water. I can easily say that here in Austin, which has a huge, huge gaming community with D&D predominant, Neither Dungeon nor Dragon brought new players in - it was an existing social network and a chain of really excellent stores. Both magazines, as good as they are, sat on shelves and in racks, gathering dust, by and large.
I would say that you are probably wrong. Because your conclusion doesn't match the facts you have presented. Someone in Austin was buying
Dragon and
Dungeon, because the excellent game stores you refer to kept stocking them. Excellent game stores avoid stocking product that doesn't sell. Of course, your assessment also (a) doesn't account for subscribers, and (b) assumes your personal experience in Austin is representative.
You're asking hypotetical 'what ifs', with what seems to be a touch of hysteria thrown into the mix, which isn't helpful.
No, I'm pointing out salient facts. Most of the current game designers and writers in the industry right now got their start in the business by writing articles that appeared in
Dungeon or
Dragon. This is not a hypothetical. This is a known fact. This avenue of entry is being cut off.
Most WotC products have been heavily promoted via
Dragon and
Dungeon, and most supporting gaming material that helps make using WotC products enjoyable is almost exclusively marketed via those magazines. This is not a hypothetical. This is historically verifiable. This avenue is now being cut off.
Many gamers have gotten their first gaming experiences via the magazines, and many other rely upon the magazines to connect them with the gaming hobby, or assist them in keeping their campaigns going. The only thing hypothetical about this is the volume; we know this is true for many gamers, because they have said so, we just don't know if the figure is 100 gamers, or 1,000, or 10,000 or 100,000 for which this is true.
Your singular experience, like mine, does not equal the market; the mean is what we need to look at. WotC may or may not give up a marketing avenue by pulling the magazines in and switching to DI. I don't disagree that the decision isn't a bad one; I think it is. But I also think that the importance of both magazines, as beloved as they are by us hardcore gamers, is being vastly overestimated.
Actually, the mean is
not what needs to be evaluated. Because the mean is not the type of gamer who buys big piles of WotC products. The hardcore gamers are. Back when Dancey did his now famous survey, I recall that he found that a tiny percentage of gamers accounted for a large percentage of gaming product purchases (something that is actually true for many products in many markets). I don't see any real reason to think that this pattern has significantly changed.
